The Skeleton Man

The company moved forward in neat formation, a young soldier no more than eighteen in pole position. Dryden glimpsed from side to side the wooden cutout targets of Red Force in the shadows of derelict houses and shops. In one, behind a perspex window, a soldier in a combat hat stood transfixed beside a marble table, all that was left of the village butcher’s. Dryden caught his own reflection, the austere symmetrical face as immobile as that of the knight on the tomb in the church.

A line of rats dashed across the sunlight in single file, swallowed by the shadows of a well-worn doorstep.

The Dring had buildings on its north side, but along the south side a deep ditch ran, water sluggish at the bottom and overgrown with reeds. This brook acted as a culvert, taking water away from the high ground by the church and the water tower. As they walked the street the silky ‘plop’ of vermin retreating into the stream accompanied them. On the far side a tumbledown line of medieval cottages sagged, a way across the ditch provided by a series of makeshift bridges made of railway sleepers or corrugated iron. Dryden noted that one of the cottages still had its original front door, oak dotted with flaking red paint, a knocker in the shape of a leaping fox. The row was broken by a large gap, an open farmyard in which a rusted plough stood with the burnt-out frame of a tractor. On the side of the barn Dryden recognized the slogan he’d seen on that last day, sprayed by a vandal in letters three feet high: SQUADDIES FUCK OFF. Now the sentiment was almost illegible, the paint faded, but a line of dead crows hung on a wire looked like a more recent warning, a further sign that when the army wasn’t firing on Jude’s Ferry the village still had its own secret life.

‘Poachers,’ said Broderick at his shoulder. ‘We know they get in, but we patch up the holes, send in the occasional patrol at night, keep them guessing.’

Above them the sunlight died and, looking up, Dryden watched as a dark bank of cloud, fringed with grey falling rain, slid over Jude’s Ferry like a coffin lid. The first drops, as fat as grapes, made the dust jump at their feet. They were just thirty feet from the bridge now and they could see where the stray shell had gone. Past the simple façade of the New Ferry Inn was a yard surrounded by outbuildings. One, more substantial than the rest, had taken a direct hit, a hole punched through the low roof, the jagged edges still smoking. Outside in the street three soldiers worked at a manhole cover, from which they had already run a hosepipe across into the ruins of the building. Inside a soldier stood amongst the shadowy rubble, a lit torch turned down to his boots.

He signalled to Broderick. As they picked their way over the strewn bricks and splintered wood the rain began to fall, hissing amongst the smouldering debris. The explosion had blown away the doors and destroyed the ground-floor flight of a wooden staircase which had led up to a loft, revealing a letterbox black hole and a set of steps leading down into a cellar. Dryden could see torches beneath, sweeping the darkness.

At a shout, water gushed into the flames, cascading back down the steps.

Broderick nodded. ‘OK. Good stuff. Where’s our problem then?’ The major looked nervous, suddenly less assured when faced with the unexpected.

One of the soldiers directed a torch beam down the steps.

‘You might want to go down alone, sir,’ suggested the squaddie.

Broderick thought about it for a second, then a few more.

The major took off his combat helmet, a strange gesture, and led the way. ‘Who’s been down?’ he asked.

‘Corporal’s down, sir; half of A-platoon.’

Broderick looked at Dryden. ‘No point being coy now – come on.’

They dropped down the cellar steps and Dryden felt the temperature fall as they left behind the humidity of the day. His eyes switched to night vision and the scene was revealed: the floor already an unbroken glass-like sheet of water just a few centimetres deep. The cellar was large, an underground store in brick, and around the walls stood five of Broderick’s men, torches trained to the centre of the room, each immobile, stilled.

Before them, illuminated, a body twisted slowly on a rope. The sudden rainstorm had disturbed the stale air and so the shrouded shape turned, the rope and beam creaking. The face, or what had been the face, swung towards Dryden and he saw the gleam of the lipless mouth, dull teeth and a bone-white skull. Across one cheekbone he glimpsed the mummified remains of a tendon. Clothes, perished beyond shape or colour, floated out like cobwebs.

Outside the rain intensified and turned to hail, falling like gravel, and the wind it brought turned the hanging bones one last time in a graceful arc before the rust-weakened hook finally gave up its prisoner and the body fell to the floor.

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